Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

Doctor Oz did a segment about aspertame on his show recently. I'm happy he finally acknowledged some of the problems with aspartame, but I don't think he went far enough about the dangers of this chemical.

That's right, aspertame is made of chemicals, nothing natural about it. Do you know how aspertame was discovered? A scientist was working on a new medication back in the 1960's and accidentally had a taste of what would become known as aspertame when it landed in his mouth. Doesn't sound too good for you, does it?

I was talking with Rich Hubbard a couple of weeks back about my weight loss progress. To say the least things were going pretty slow. I was eating better but I lost the vigor from my previous motivations (the really embarrassing ones... My motivation to lose weight & My 2nd motivation to lose weight: A trip in Boston)

Rich recommended that I try the weight-loss challenge that kept him motivated and involved.  I figured it was worth the shot. Plus it would get me out of the house and bring me face to face with other people that have similar goals.

I've learned a lot the past couple years on the correct way to lose weight, mostly from trial and error. I was like many others out there, and struggled to try and lose weight but not succeed.

Finally I realized... you have to eat properly too, not just exercise. Before I lost the weight, I would exercise two to three times a week but did nothing to change my diet. When I think about how bad my diet was back then, I wonder how I could eat all that I did. I mean a good majority of the food I ate had a ton of sugar in them. I'm talking about candy bars, ice cream, frozen dinners, cookies, the list goes on and on!

You know how the saying goes when addicted drug users say they have a "monkey on my back".  What do people addicted to junk food say?

"I have a marketing monster on my back?"

Back in April of 2012, I was in my first Wellness Challenge at the YMCA in Torrington. I had already started to lose weight... I was 299 pounds at the start of the challenge, which was actually down from 345 pounds in November of 2011. After losing 45 pounds, my weight loss had slowed down. I decided to try the Wellness Challenge and figured it might kick start the weight loss again, as I still had a long way to go in order to get to a healthy weight.

The kickoff meeting at the first challenge changed my lifestyle completely. After that, I followed the guidelines that I learned and still follow many of the guidelines. As they say, it's about a lifestyle change more than it is about a temporary reduction in weight.